1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to cooling mechanism in general, and in particular to a thermoelectric cooling mechanism. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to an integrated circuit device having a built-in thermoelectric cooling mechanism.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The fact that integrated circuit (IC) devices can operate faster at sub-ambient temperature is well-known in the art. For example, the performance of an IC device improves by 50% when operated at xe2x88x9250xc2x0 C. instead of ambient room temperature, and a 200% speed improvement can be achieved by cooling the IC device with liquid nitrogen to xe2x88x92196xc2x0 C. Similar performance improvements have also been observed on interconnects within the IC device. For example, interconnect resistance decreases by a factor of two when the IC device is operated at xe2x88x9250xc2x0 C. rather than at ambient room temperature. Thus, IC device performance can be significantly benefited by sub-ambient temperature, which begs the question of how to cool IC devices to a sub-ambient temperature in an efficient and cost effective manner.
Conventionally, sub-ambient cooling is accomplished through gas/liquid vapor compression-based cooling systems, using Freon-type refrigerants to provide heat transfer. Although vapor compression-based cooling can be quite efficient, a significant amount of hardware, such as a compressor, a condenser, an evaporator, and related coolant transfer plumbing, is required. As a result, vapor compression-based cooling has not found general acceptance for cooling small objects such as IC devices.
A more promising method for cooling IC devices is thermoelectric cooling. In addition to being compact, thermoelectric devices such as Peltier devices are also very reliable because they typically have no associated moving parts. The present disclosure provides an improved thermoelectric cooling mechanism for cooling IC devices.
In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention, electric circuits are formed on one side of a wafer. Subsequently, multiple thermoelectric cooling devices are formed on another side of the wafer.
All objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent in the following detailed written description.